He recalled that now the EU has closed its airspace for Russian airlines, and therefore there are no conditions for discussing this issue.
“But the Russian space is closed, I emphasize, for EU airlines... But the very posing of the question of the abolition of payment... is fundamentally wrong.
European officials should have better understood what the mechanism of the “Trans-Siberian royalty” is, Kosachev wrote in his Telegram.
The senator emphasized that this is not about paying for the right to fly, but about “pool agreements”: foreign carriers pay for the use of airspace, shortening the route and thereby saving money.
“Article 15 of the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation of 1944 establishes that overflight of the territory of the state cannot be paid.
However, no provisions of the Convention in connection with the practice of concluding “pool agreements” between airlines are violated due to the fact that they do not concern overflight fees,” the politician explained.
Kosachev added that neither the USSR nor Russia signed agreements on the mentioned convention.
The head of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Transport, Henrik Hololei, said earlier that Russia should not charge international airlines for flights over Siberia after the restrictions imposed against the background of the Russian special operation in Ukraine are lifted.
In April, it was reported that the plane of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was forced to cross the North Pole in order to bypass Russian airspace.